Re: tags { hosttags = 1 }

You're on the right track. The problem seems to be that vg00 must be activated while the system's hostname is not set yet, so the LVM commands cannot know they should read the lvm_.conf.

I had this problem too, and ended up putting the volume_list configuration line to /etc/lvm/lvm.conf instead of host-specific /etc/lvm/lvm_.conf. I don't really see why the setting should be in a host-specific file.

This change eliminates the requirement to comment out the hosttags configuration while running a mkinitrd.

In the "activation" section of lvm.conf, there is even a commented example of the volume_list keyword. It gives a big clue about how the volume_list configuration works. Search for "volume_list" in the lvm.conf file and you'll find it.

The syntax for the volume_list configuration:

volume_list = [ "vg00", "@" ]

It means: "you're allowed to activate vg00 always, and any other VGs only if they have the tag".